Way past expiration

Thursday

Nov 4, 2010 at 9:00 AM

Due Date Grade: C-

Everybody&rsquo;s trying to recreate the success of The Hangover, so why not the director of that gold mine himself, Todd Phillips? He&rsquo;s secured central loony Zack Galifianakis, doing pretty much the same one-note near-autistic socially-challenged nerd shtick, and he&rsquo;s even managed to coax an actual talented actor on board, Robert Downey Jr. There are lots of gross-out hijinks and eventually some warm and fuzzy male bonding. The only thing missing is the smart, fast-moving, inspired lunatic plot. Boy is it missing.

I hated this film so much it angered me every time it made me laugh. You just don&rsquo;t want to encourage these people.

Actually, my experience watching is probably much the way Downey Jr.&rsquo;s character feels when uber annoying Zack G simply won&rsquo;t go away and everything that he does just makes the situation worse. It&rsquo;s as if I&rsquo;ve been taken hostage by mediocrity. The main difference is that with me there is no pathetic contrived Stockholm Syndrome bromance going on under the surface to engineer an embarrassingly phony happy ending between us. In other words, if this film was someone I was forced to sit next to in a car for a trip across half the country, I would kill them in less than five minutes. With pleasure.

You know the plot because it isn&rsquo;t even a plot, it&rsquo;s a situation, and one that&rsquo;s about as original as a box of Shaw&rsquo;s brand corn flakes. Downey Jr. is Peter Highman, an architect trying to get back to LA because his wife is about to pop out a live one. Galifianakis is Ethan Tremblay, an annoying putz carrying a coffee can with his fathers cremation ashes and on his way to what he calls &ldquo;Hollywood&rdquo; to fulfill his dream of being on actor on Two and a Half Men. Okay, points for ripping on a TV show that is so idiotic it&rsquo;s almost surreal. But he also has with him a masturbating dog. Points removed. And there&rsquo;s even a scene where he and the dog masturbate together, in the car, with Downey Jr. forced to watch. Death is too good for these people.

To his credit, throughout this entire painful exercise Downey Jr. wears the beleaguered look of someone barely putting up with the film, rather than wasting perfectly good effort performing in it. One of the best lines is at the end where, reunited with his wife (ooh! Spoiler!) played by Michelle Monaghan, she says something about Ethan being his friend, and he corrects her, saying: &ldquo;I survived him. It&rsquo;s not the same thing.&rdquo; There&rsquo;s another scene I liked where he&rsquo;s left to watch pot-dealing mom Juliette Lewis&rsquo; kids and one starts taunting him, so he punches the little brat in the stomach and shuts him up. I wish I could punch this film in the stomach.

As I said, there are some laughs to be had, and even some well done sequences, like where Peter gives Ethan a scenario to play in order to prove that he can act (oh the irony), and a decent cameo by Danny McBride (who should have had a much bigger part in this thing) as the belligerent guy behind the Western Union counter. But all that is undone when the lame writers try for pathos, and Downey Jr. has to go through the predictable and utterly unconvincing motions of acting like he&rsquo;s growing fond of this insufferable douche bag.

We in the audience are supposed to follow along like sheep, because we suddenly realize that, despite his many, many, many faults, deep inside the guy is really a decent human being, and all that. Fat chance.

I may have gotten a chuckle or two out of it, but I didn&rsquo;t enjoy this movie, I survived it.

And that&rsquo;s not the same thing.

Watch the trailer below:&nbsp;

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